Managing troubled and troubling students using child guidance principles and techniques

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Thursday, March 10, 2016

How Habitually Disruptive and Troubled Students Benefit from a Child Guidance or Therapeutic Approach

These are dramatic
times for teachers. In educating children, we have a difficult and demanding
role. Like no other, our profession is responsible in ensuring that children
develop emotionally, socially, and academically. As society evolves in
complexity, so does our role. With so many social and emotional issues
affecting directly a student’s potential for learning, we can no longer
guarantee our success in educating children relying only on academic expertise.
The fact is that, like adults, in coping with modern society’s pressures and
demands, children are paying a heavy emotional toll too. At alarming rates,
more and more children and adolescents are experiencing all kinds of stress and
trauma reactions, and at all levels of severity. This can turn into a chaotic
scenario for teachers if it catches us ill-prepared.

Since children’s
affective and emotional status strongly influences how they perform in the
classroom, it is imperative for teachers to become acquainted with how students
develop and function socio-emotionally. If we are going to remain effective in
doing our job —thriving rather than simply surviving— we need direct access to
the current ideas and latest development in child guidance or psychoeducation,
a therapeutic approach that blends psychological and educational theories and
research.

How Habitually Disruptive and Acting-Out Students Benefit
from a Therapeutic Approach

Child guidance, a
multidimensional approach to the education of children with emotional and
behavioral difficulties, trains children in understanding how feelings and
emotions relate to their behavior difficulties. To help students change
dysfunctional behavior, this therapeutic model contains a mixture of affective
(emotions), cognitive (thinking), and behavioral (behavior) elements, so that
acting-out students learn to recognize and understand how their emotions and
way of thinking drive their particular pattern of behavior. This therapeutic
model is based on the principle that behavioral change comes when students are
able to understand the motives behind their behavior and are properly trained
in productive and more positive ways of behaving.

What Therapeutic Teachers Do for Habitually Disruptive and
Acting-Out Students

Focusing on the
unique social and affective needs of the child, a therapeutic teacher develops
an adult-child relationship that is conducive to a new insight, and is growth
promoting. The therapeutic teacher coaches the student in finding alternative
ways of meeting his/her socio-emotional needs in a more effective and socially
appropriate fashion. The teacher-student therapeutic relationship takes into
full consideration the cognitive and affective factors that are influencing
behavior, and involves the student in finding and implementing alternative ways
of behaving. The student takes an active role throughout this process in
his/her own emotional and behavioral improvement.

A therapeutic model
is deeply rooted in the belief that all troubled behavior is determined by a
multiplicity of factors in interaction, and that, to be able to change problem
behavior, every aspect of the child’s personality —feeling, thinking, and
behaving— needs to be taken into account. The therapeutic teacher explains
important social and affective concepts and techniques to children, and trains
disruptive and troubled students in how to manage their own emotions and
behavior. The therapeutic teacher develops an accepting and trusting
relationship with the difficult student, seeing the child’s disruptive and
acting-out behaviors as a challenge for both teacher and student to master, and
a rich opportunity to help the student develop more productive ways of feeling,
thinking and behaving. The therapeutic teacher never “gives up” on the
difficult student, perseverating in strengthening a mutually trusting relationship
while implementing enhanced child guidance techniques to help the child. The therapeutic
teacher always uses a solution-oriented language, focusing on the possible and
changeable when working with the student, and expressing to the child that change is possible and that all students can develop self-control.

Now You Can Develop Child Guidance Skills

To learn how to cope
with stressful or troublesome events, build positive attitudes and effective
life skills, and achieve their social and academic goals, schools provide the
ideal environment in which classroom teachers and related services personnel
with the adequate training can teach social and affective skills to children.
Teaching these important skills to students relates directly to the role of
schools in preparing children to function effectively and to deal competently
with society’s demands. When we teach social and affective skills to students,
we are giving them the ability to understand and manage their own emotions and
behavior, and we are assisting children in developing resilience in coping with
further troublesome events along the road.

Unfortunately, a
great deal of this very much-needed information from the child guidance and
emotional communication literature never reaches teachers. In Psychoeducation for Teachers of Students
withBehavior Problems, we recognize and address this
need. Now we can train teachers to resolve students’ behavior problems by
applying therapeutic techniques based on sound psycho-educational and communication
principles. Grounded in the author’s strong psychological and educational
background and expertise, Psychoeducation
forTeachers of StudentswithBehavior Problemstakes full advantage of
current psychological and educational theory and research to train teachers in
the child guidance techniques they need to become skillful behavior managers
and behavior change promoters.

Related Reading…

Essentials of Emotional Communication
for Reaching the Unreachable Student: Where Do I Start? What Do I Say? How Do I
Do It? To preview this book
on Amazon, click on this link.

A Call to All Teachers:

Proudly announcing our new
group for educators worldwide, “We Teach the World.” Our aim is to connect
teachers and related school personnel all over the world, so that we can share
much-needed ideas, strategies, and lesson plans as well as all kinds of
resources in classroom management and in student discipline. Coordinating our
effort worldwide, we can tell each other where to find important resources and
information. If you administer a teaching blog or have created educational
resources to facilitate our job, you are welcome to share them here. As long as
they contribute to education, we want to know of your business. Teachers with
questions, post them here; mentors and seasoned teachers, your valuable
experience and unique perspective matter to us, so make your voices heard.
Because isolated, we teachers are imaginative, resourceful and resilient, but connected,
connected we are imaginative, resourceful, resilient AND powerful. To join us, click
on, “We Teach the World.”

1 comment:

Thanks for update your knowledgeable important decision based information. It is very useful for every parents. Its right way Reward good behavior. Praise your child and give extra attention when he or she does something right. Give a reward for good behavior.Dr Amit BangChild care specialistNutrition Planning classes

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Introducing "The Psycho-Educational Teacher"

Psycho-education is an enhanced behavior management approach based on the principle that, no matter how severe a behavior problem is, all children can grow socio-emotionally and can learn how to self-control behavior. Psycho-educational teachers believe that socio-emotional growth takes place when children understand the role that emotions play in their school difficulties. This therapeutic approach aims at helping children understand how their troubling feelings and emotions influence their behavior. A teacher trained in psycho-education applies skilled child guidance techniques to help children develop effective coping strategies, self-control of behavior, and social problem-solving skills. Psycho-educational principles and techniques include cognitive (thinking), affective (feelings), and behavioral aspects. This innovative blog is a must read for teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents with an interest in psycho-educational theory and methods to help children with recurrent behavior problems.